The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette has a retrospective on the Blizzard of 1978. Yes, it gets a capital “B”. It was just that huge. I don’t remember much about it, but it did make something of an impression on my 6 year old mind. Lots of snow; no school. In any case, nothing in the past 30 years has really come close.

Frank Gray has a column on the Blizzard.

To those who didn’t experience it, just accept that no matter how cold it gets, no matter how much it snows, nothing that has happened since can even hold a candle to the storm that roared across the state in late January 1978.

Looks like West Lafayette’s brand new mayor, John Dennis, survived a serious scare. While traveling in some icy-snowy weather up in Michigan, he hit a patch of ice and rolled his Explorer. Fortunately, he got away from the accident with only a torn tendon to his finger. His wife was uninjured. The biggest tragedy was that his dog was thrown from the vehicle and killed.

Bobby Fischer died recently. He was a chess genius, useful for the U.S. during the Cold War, and apparently a paranoid, raving, nutjob.

Sophia Voravong and Joe Larson, writing for the Lafayette Journal & Courier, have an article on Lafayette Police Chief Don Roush being called up to serve in Afghanistan. Roush is also a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserves, he’s served in the reserves for the past 18 years.

I had the opportunity to meet chief Roush on one occasion, and he’s a very impressive individual. This is one sort of loss caused by the ongoing wars that doesn’t get talked about very much. Obviously, we are losing blood and treasure because of the wars, but we’re also losing talented individuals who would otherwise be contributing to their respective communities.

Governor Daniels said some stuff. I didn’t watch. I’m not entirely convinced these sorts of speeches matter much one way or the other. (Maybe Bush’s “yellow cake” State of the Union speech ruined them all for me.) If Daniels said anything we didn’t already know, please share.

Andre Carson got the Democratic nomination for the special election to succeed Julia Carson as the representative of Indiana’s 7th Congressional District. I don’t know thing one about Andre. He could be a very competent individual for all I know. I still don’t like it, because I don’t care for dynasties or nepotism in elected offices. It wouldn’t bother me overly much if he completed his grandmother’s term. But, I feel like the Democratic citizens of Indiana’s 7th Congressional District should nominate someone outside of the family to run in the general election in November.

Update 1/14/08 – Bil Browning has a very interesting post on the, shall we say, “irregularities” which he encountered as a Marion County precinct committee person trying to participate in the Democratic nominating process for the IN-07 special election.

Wikipedia-vision: A near real time indication of Wikipedia edits with a Google Maps overlay.

Apparently this was inspired by a similarly compelling Flickrvision.

Just stumbled across a blog with a name as fun as it is descriptive:

Sweet Jesus I Hate Chris Matthews.

Matthews showed spurts of lucidity in the run up to the Iraq War, opining that Iraq wasn’t a threat and wasn’t worth invading. But, in general, he is a giant ball of gasbaggery.